It’s another quiet holiday break for casa mauraweb, for which I’m again grateful. We’ve done some xmasy things and some family visiting and saw some art and ate good food and have more good food and friends events planned for the next few days. I’ve also gotten some writing off my plate, which was needed and is making me feel better about the several (sigh) deadlines I’ve saddled myself with between now and early February.

Leaving town meant driving, so much driving, too much driving, it seemed to me. Though really any driving is too much driving for me at this point. I’m more prone to carsickness the older I get, and the nagging anxiety I have about climate change (and the role of cars and driving) has gotten louder this year for sure. It’s tempting to blame the recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change which revealed that warming is happening more quickly than (some) originally anticipated. But really my increased unease dates to my reading of this summertime NYT magazine article Losing Earth: The Decade We Almost Stopped Climate Change. You might want to read it, though you might not, depending on your personal threshold for retroactive anger and despair.

Because wow, my fighting against despair brain is all about alternate timeline fantasies right now. What if all of those efforts in the 80s had worked to create policies that would slow down global warming? What if Al Gore had actually been allowed to take office? What if the US hadn’t invested so heavily in cars and highways at the expense of public transportation and trains? And the worst kicker, the ultimate gut punch, what if we had a federal government that was interested in figuring out how to deal with climate change rather than actively, cravenly, corporate-greedily speeding it up?

It all makes me angry in small ways as well as big ways. I have to travel to Cleveland for a conference next year, and I keep looking at train and bus routes trying to figure out some non-ridiculous way to get there without flying which just does not exist, no matter how many times I check the maps and schedules. Jonathan told me the other day that apparently the distance between Beijing and Shanghai is similar to that between NYC and Chicago, and there are 39 trains each day between the two cities, a ride that takes 4 hours. FOUR. HOURS. We took the train to Chicago once in the 90s; it took 18 hours (in the regular seats, not the sleeper compartments, because grad students) and also broke down and we had to change to a new train. But we got to see Neil Young eating in the dining car, because he apparently doesn’t fly, so yay?

The big ways are the scarier ways, of course. What will happen, and when? Unpredictability of weather and other natural disasters, for sure. Should we move? Should we not move? Who can tell? We don’t fly all that much, maybe a few times/year total for all of us for vacation/family visiting/work (just me). Should we stop flying completely? What else can we do? I firmly believe that we are outside of the realm of individual solutions, though I also think that as an individual I should keep on doing the things I’m doing already to reduce my carbon footprint.

Ugh, I hate to end on a down note, but it’s hard to find climate-related anything to be hopeful about. I will say that I’m looking to get more active in climate justice work this year, maybe call it a resolution? And I’m cheered by the work of the young folks behind the Sunrise Movement. You may remember them occupying Nancy Pelosi’s office after the midterm elections, and they’re doing urgent work pushing for policy changes to mitigate the effects of climate change. If you’re looking to donate before the end of the year and are as freaked out as I am about climate change, maybe consider a donation to help them keep up their good work?